Well that's a relief! Because it wasn't me. But when I called to speak with the good folks on Ally's Fraud Prevention team I learned that whoever had tried to open the account had my name, my address, my date of birth, and my social security number. There was one thing they didn't get quite right, which is what tipped off the bank that it might be an imposter. (I'm not going to mention what that was, because it would be too easy to do a little extra research to get it right, and I'm really not interested in helping these thieves figure out where they went wrong.) I wondered if it had anything to do with the folks who hacked my Facebook account last November.
To the best of my knowledge, I haven't lost any money. Although it is scary to think what might have happened had they actually been able to open the account. But my time for the next day and a half consisted of printing out a 98-page credit bureau report (I started with Experian) and calling everybody I have accounts with to make sure that there are no applications pending and that there were no additional accounts that I didn't know about. I also had to file an identity theft police report. A copy of this police report will need to be forwarded to the credit reporting agencies so they can keep the warning on my account for seven years, instead of just 90 days.
The other thing we did was look into some of these companies that offer identity theft protection. As near as we could determine, they charge you to do things that you could do for yourself at no charge and they are not as effective as they would have you believe. (It seems the guy who was hawking Lifelock and publishing his name and social security number just to "prove" how ironclad it was got hacked. So much for that.)
But like with any kind of theft, you're left a bit angry. You want something, you go work for it. You don't steal it. Build your own identity. (Don't these people have mothers?) And if you seriously want to steal mine, you should be forced to take my bum knee along with it.
